The eye is a small and complicated organ that is very delicate and sensitive on which to operate. The slightest error could permanently damage the eye, and result in impaired vision or even blindness. To avoid surgical mishaps, the development and honing of the necessary skills and expertise in performing medical procedure of the eye require hands on trainings, and practices in life-like settings. While ophthalmologists require years of comprehensive training of various surgical procedures, physicians in other specialties and first responders often need to respond to emergency eye trauma, and thus also need to learn how to perform basic emergency eye examination/treatment, and be familiarize with the use of specialized tools.
The training of emergency treatment of an eye trauma often involves hands on simulations, in which the doctors practice surgical procedures and techniques with the use of specialized equipment on a plastic eye or animal eye. Typically, a life-size replicate of a human head is provided to each trainee, which contains a cavity that mimics the contour, depth and features of a human eye socket. An animal or cadaver eye is placed inside this cavity and hold in place to prevent movement of the eyeball during practice. The eyeball can be pinned or sutured to the eye socket. While animal and cadaver eyeballs give a realistic feel of working with human tissue, a significant drawback is the lack of stability of eyeball during complex suturing exercises or training of other techniques that place significant pressure and torsion on the eye, and also limits its use with phacoemulsification machines. Alternatively, the animal or cadaver eye can be held in place by suction applied through a suction ring on a plastic base. A syringe plunger is connected to the suction ring and withdrawn to create the sufficient vacuum, which is maintained by clamping off the connected tubing. While the suction eye simulator is capable of holding an eyeball securely in place, the flat suction platform does not offers realistic eye movement during procedures. Animal or cadaver eyeball is also expensive and scarce, and hard to maintain, so they are often reserved for trainings of more complex ophthalmic procedures. Commercial training simulators, such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,291,016, US20150024364 and U.S. Pat. No. 8,845,334 supports hands on trainings of examination and treatment of eye. However, these simulators are often limited to bench top practices, and do not permit practice use of special equipment or tool, such as a slit lamp. Furthermore, neither a plastic eyeball nor an animal eyeball offers the close anatomical resemblance to a real human eyeball.
Thus, there still is a long-felt, yet unresolved need for an improved ophthalmic training simulator, and method for practicing emergency procedures and techniques related the examination and treatment of eye trauma. Moreover, there is a need in the art for a cost-efficient ophthalmology training simulator that supports repeat practices of emergency ophthalmic procedures and techniques under different simulation scenarios.